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Google Allows Carriers To Ban Tethering Apps
iluvcapra writes "Google, in its continuing struggle to provide phone carriers (if not its end users) with an open platform, is now banning tethering apps from the Android market. These apps haven't disappeared and can still be sideloaded, insofar as your carrier doesn't lock this functionality or snoop on your packets."
From what I've seen (from screenshots) they're not banned as such, but they will not load to a specific carrier if that carrier has asked that it be blocked. You can still side-load it, with your carrier's data charges being incurred at your peril.
It puts more load on their network if you use up your five gigabytes of monthly data with your laptop instead of your cell phone, unless you pay extra for it.
Google Allows Carriers To Ban Tethering Apps
I beg to differ, and here's why.
Android based smart phone users are not prevented from installing tethering apps from elsewhere. In fact, one can [still] install them if on the Sprint network.
What Google has done is to 'comply' with Verizon's request to have tethering apps removed from the Android Market if this market is accessed by Android devices *on* the Verizon network.
This falls short of a ban as implied by the diction in the title.
By jailbreaking your handset, and telling the carrier to be more honest in their marketing next time if they complain?
Also, while I'm aware that this could only be considered 'on topic' by the most tenuous of standards, I'm surprised we got a term so positive as 'jailbreak' into mainstream usage. The connotation that the phone as-provided is trapped in a jail, and that the user is freeing it by hacking the OS, seems like a reasonable analogy to me, it's just that I would've expected the carriers to go for a bit of negative PR. Something along the lines of "Sure, you could install that evil communist app that hasn't been authorised by an upstanding corporation's store, but you'd need to terrorist-molest your phone to do so. You don't want to do that, do you?"
With virtually all carriers capping virtually all plans these days, any rationale for preventing tethering disappeared.
Now it is simply GREED. They have special plans that add tethering. Therefore you can't tether for free any more.
They can't claim network impact. As long as you stay under your Cap what is the problem?
There is precious little data to suggest tethering users actually use more data. I know I don't. Sometimes I just want to
send an email attachment that happens to be on my laptop. Some times I need to SSH into a server and can't put up with
trying do deal with a command line task on that tiny screen.
But it seems the defenders of this clamp down all seem to be rushing to defending the carriers because the carriers
rely on the "over sell" of their bandwidth. Any user that approaches his CAP is therefore somehow stealing from
the carrier. (I kid you not, I've seen this argument posted).
But even to reach that level of gullibility you have to buy into the idea that people who tether use more data. But its just not supported by the facts.
The coming release of a flood of WIFI only tablets, with no continuing data plan for the carriers has a lot of people planning to tether these tablets for those few times a year when traveling where there is no handy WIFI. The carriers are trying to nip this in the bud, and they believe that every handheld device needs to have a carrier plan.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This is a feature of 2.2 (and above) unless your evil phone carrier disables it. (T-Mobile is happy with me using it.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
You just have to have the vpn server on port 80 or 443 and you'll look a lot like https :)
That's what I do to get on my vpn from the library.
In Australia the word root means sex!